


Take Me Home

by Jairephix



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 19:38:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17607680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jairephix/pseuds/Jairephix
Summary: The year is 1987.It's Kepler, West Virginia.





	Take Me Home

The year is 1987.

Mama's been in Kepler, West Virginia longer than she can remember. There's something about the Radio Silence Zone that makes her feel more comfortable here. Like home is buried here in the heart of the Monongahela National Forest.

Even after 16 long years, the cassette tape had survived untold looping plays in her ol' beat-up pick-up truck, filling the cab with the soothing voice of John Denver as she was bucked and rocked with every bump and pothole in every road that needed more than a little repair work. They weren't on some main highway strip, and tourism wasn't too big an industry out this way, not so far away from places like Point Pleasant, so they had to make due til the DPW got plenty of time and spare resources to patch it back up to smoothness.

That was okay. It gave the roads a familiar feeling too, one were you could learn to time all the bounces based on how fast and where you were going. It was like a song whose lyrics you had memorized so long ago.

Still, Mama wasn't too sure the truck would run for another 16 years, and she might have to turn this one in at the junkyard soon, and get another truck that would run for a little longer than it should have. She liked her trucks worn in; it gave them a personality. It made her recognizable. That, and her big shotgun in the cab, right beside her, for those just-in-case moments. The ones were it was more oft some person thinkin' she'd be an easy target rather than a woman with fury born into her veins, ready to protect what's hers. That, the wide-brimmed hat with the feathers tucked in the band, that made the angles of her cheeks and the sharp line of her nose all the more obvious, calling out the knowledge that this land was more hers by rights than anyone else's.

Hell, even as she turned past the sign welcoming her back, she could already see the waves from folks around town. The people of Kepler knew Mama well, even if the knowledge of her name had died long before this generation could remember what life was like before cars were commonplace. She was a tall, broad, intimidating looking woman, with silver threads streaking her blue-black hair, and her dark eyes could burn something fierce...but she was friendly. She might not always know how to react to others, but her sharp sense of justice, pride, and protection over the sleepy town had given her the nickname, like she was a bear protecting her cubs. They knew her as the woman who would keep any trouble away from their small town.

And, honestly, they just were generally pleased as pie to see her.

There was, however, another side to the sleepy town she wanted to protect. The people, the ones who were outcasts from their homeland, banished from Sylvain for...well, she didn't want to ask why. Sometimes, folks don't end up where they wanna be, and sometimes those circumstances are outside their control. With how lost, hurt, and hopeless some of them looked, Mama wasn't about to ask them. She could see in their eyes and the lines of their face that they were worried that someone would come along and force them away from the small hot springs that they needed to survive, hidden way up in the forest. Like she could break up what little home they had made up there and not call herself a hypocrite. She had seen what happened when folks had been forced from their homes, from their homeland, and sent somewhere foreign, new, somewhere that wasn't the home you spent generations building and protecting, somewhere that wasn't part of your soul.

It wasn't gonna happen to these poor folks, not while Mama was still breathing deep, and it sure as hell wasn't ever going to come from her hand.

 No, she worked with them, instead, asking them about craftsmenship and trades, until they built Amnesty Lodge, and settled them into their new home.

So, maybe it was needless to say that she was a might bit protective of this town, and all the people in it.

She knew every secret path through the forest, she knew the building power that was so different from this world bubbling through the hot springs way up on the mountain, and by god, if she tried, she knew every single goddamn tree in the woods. And somewhere, deep in her gut, if she tried even harder, she can pull up the thoughts soaked into the rocks around that gate, of that awful war that pulled the world of Sylvain further and further away, because of the simple, overpowering greed of humans. It boiled her blood something awful, to think of the world that tried to be friends and all that came of it was hurt and bloodshed.

Some things really do never change.

So instead, she doesn't try to seek out the pain from that war. It comes to the front of her mind, sometimes, unbidden and unwanted, on a dark night when she's feeling real lonesome and the woods seem to weep in pain.

But right now?

Right now, it was the heat of summer, 1987. She had her old truck, the rattle of the cassette in the tape deck, and the soft light of the nearly-full moon to guide her.

Tomorrow night, the world would change once more.

\--

It was 2017.

That old cassette was still kicking around, 30 years later, somehow still miraculously in one piece, still able to play, but updated times meant a CD slot instead of the tape deck. The remastered version of the song blared through her speakers as she pulled up slowly in front of the doors to a small resort in Snowshoe, West Virginia. It was only a 20 minute drive up the Interstate, and one of the residents of Amnesty Lodge had been commissioned to carve this beautiful, ornate elk, and Mama knew that none of them could deliver it. So it was up to her.

And a damn good thing she did, when the fool girl set the place on fire.

Mama would have never thought things would play out the way they did.


End file.
